Biden tries to regain Europe’s trust
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden tried to reassure U.S. allies Friday that he is turning the page on his predecessor’s “America First” approach and restoring a foreign policy that values cooperation with the world’s major democracies to tackle global challenges.
In two virtual appearances before world leaders, his first as president, Biden emphasized that he is restoring and building upon the Obama administration’s diplomatic achievements, including the 2015 multination nuclear deal with Iran and the Paris climate accord, and seeking to work collaboratively to contain threats from Russia and China.
“America is back. The trans-atlantic alliance is back, and we are not looking backward. We are looking forward together,” Biden declared to the Munich Security Conference, an annual gathering of world leaders to discuss international security.
Biden reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Article V, the mutualdefense promise among treaty members that has been a pillar of the postwar democratic order but which former President Donald Trump had only grudgingly embraced.
“I know the last few years have tested our trans
Atlantic relationship,” Biden said. “But the United
States is determined — determined — to reengage with Europe, to consult with you, to earn back our position of leadership.”
The president nonetheless faces a hard job persuading allies, many of whom emerged from the Trump years nervous about U.S. reliability, said James Townsend, a former deputy assistant secretary of Defense now at the Center for a New American Security, a centrist Washington think tank.
“The big issue for Biden is trust, in the sense that a lot of allies are still not convinced where our politics are heading,” Townsend said. “So many of them are thinking, ‘Should we hedge because we don’t know if we can trust that the U.S. will say consistently what Biden is already saying?’”
The president asserted that democratic nations, by working together on the three urgent global challenges — the COVID-19 pandemic, economic instability and the climate crisis, would help avert another threat: the rise of autocratic governments.
“Our partnerships have endured and grown through the years because they are rooted in the richness of our shared democratic values. They’re not transactional. They’re not extractive,” Biden said, implicitly disavowing Trump’s mercantilist world view and indifference to democratic values, which strained alliances and enabled adversaries.
The Biden administration had already signaled a break from Trump’s nationalist approach. Gone is Trump’s constant criticism that allies don’t pay their share of defense costs. Instead, U.S. officials publicly commend allies for having increased their spending since 2014 — when President Barack Obama brokered an agreement that they boost military budgets — but they firmly add that some countries still fall short.